Blogs

New post on the Biblical Horizons blog on 2 Corinthians 5.21.

In looking again at Leviticus 8, I noticed that in the baptism>anointing sequence, only Aaron gets anointed at first. Then, after the sin offering and ascension offerings are completed, not only Aaron but also his sons are anointed.

That fascinates me in connection with the sequence of things in the Gospels and Acts. Jesus is baptized by John and immediately anointed by the Spirit. But while many others are baptized, both by John and by Jesus’ disciples, no one else gets anointed.

Jesus becomes the sin offering on the cross and completes His role of ascension offering when He ascends to heaven. It is only then, after the completion of the sin and ascension offerings, that He pours out the Spirit and the “sons” are anointed.

One of Peter Leithart’s chief insights is that a priest is a palace servant.

In preparing a sermon on Lord’s Day 12 for this Sunday (by way of Revelation 1 – which, by the way, focuses upon God’s people as servants in 1.1 and as a priesthood in 1.7), this got me reflecting on the question of how the high priest relates to this. If a priest is a palace servant, what is a “high” palace servant?

This in turn led me to think about the predominant Servant theme in Isaiah, a rabbit trail that turned out to be helpful, although I’m not entirely sure yet where to go with it. Read the rest of this entry »

I suggest a moratorium on new Christmas hymns, until we all learn the Magnificat and the Benedictus and the Nunc Dimittis so much by heart that they seep out our fingers at the keyboard, until we instinctively sing of Jesus’ birth like Mary, like Zecharias, like Simeon.

Another gem from Leithart.

The links between David and Christmas are clear enough on the surface of the various texts. It is after all an event that happens in Bethlehem, the city of David, and Joseph and Mary are there precisely because Joseph is of David’s lineage (Lk 2.4).

But as well as what is quite explicit, there are also other undertones and overtones from the David story.

For overtones, we can simply note that just as God passed over the “obvious” choices among Jesse’s sons in favour of the shepherd boy, so too God passes over the “obvious” choices regarding whom will receive the proclamation of the birth of the Messiah, and sends His army to make the royal announcement to… a bunch of shepherds.

Undertones: In Matthew 2, we find Herod making the mothers of Bethlehem childless; in the few verses immediately preceding the record of David’s anointing, we find Samuel hacking Agag of Amalek to pieces with the words, “As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women” (1 Sam 15.33). The connection gives us a pretty good idea what is going to happen to Herod very shortly, and so we are not surprised to learn of his death not far down the road.

For a couple weeks, I’ve had a few friends helping me beta test a new web site for Grande Prairie believers (adults 20 and up). Now it seems ready to go live:

http://grandeprairiechristian.com/

The idea here is to help local believers expand their social circles and get to know fellow Christians from the neighbourhood. Introduce yourself online with a profile, get to know one another by participating in forums and chatrooms – but don’t leave it there; once you’ve made new friends, since the whole constituency will be local, you can make arrangements to get together in real life.

So if you’re (1) a Grande Prairie area resident; (2) at least 20 years old; and (3) a Christian – please join up and join in!

New article at the Biblical Studies Center. Nothing very original, but hopefully, helpful.

In our co-ed Bible study, we’re currently listening to the audio set by James Jordan, “How to Read the Bible.” Tonight we heard the second session, entitled “Beware of Rules;” Jordan also covered his third point, “Read the Bible in the Church.”

Jordan often says very striking things and leaves you to chew on things. One of the things that he noted from Romans 1 is that “people are crazy” – professing to be wise, they became fools, because they suppressed the truth in unrighteousness and failed to respond to God’s revelation with pistis (faith, faithfulness). He also noted that Jesus is the alpha and omega - i.e. the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. And he stressed that we must let the Bible teach us how to read itself. We learn to read the Bible, not by approaching it with a set of autonomous rules, but by reading it over and over again. (Rules are spectacles, paradigm-providers. If Scripture does not provide these spectacles, our reading is in fact tending to stand over it, rather than in submission to it.)

Putting all of this together, it strikes me that what we’re really talking about is learning a new language. Jesus is the Word of God by whom all things were made and are sustained; He is the divine language, and in the Scriptures the Holy Spirit speaks Him.

When you have a baby and start to talk to him or her, the sounds you make are not very significant to that child. The slate is too blank; the child has not yet been enculturated into the language you’re speaking.

In our case, as we’ve noted, we are crazy. We’re not merely dealing with a blank slate; we’re unlearning all sorts of things that we “know” which in fact are not true.

But in both cases, it is constant exposure to the language by which the child or disciple is taught the language. Read the rest of this entry »

I have recently been engaging in a discussion regarding the importance of recovering the biblical meaning of terms like “law” and “gospel.” We Protestants have inherited a rather dominant tradition of using these terms in a rather abstract sense something along the lines of “law = any requirement God lays upon man.” “Gospel” has become virtually a technical term for forgiveness of sins apart from works. (Just as an aside: just as there is a typical Protestant use of these terms, there are also Roman Catholic uses that no doubt could be criticized. My aim here is not to say we Protestants are wrong, and Rome is right, after all; it is rather to engage in critique from within, so that we can correct things we ought to correct.)

Now, of course, God does lay requirements upon man, and God does grant forgiveness of sins apart from works. But the Bible’s use of the terms “gospel” and “law,” particularly in Paul’s writings, where Protestant discussion on these subjects tends to centre around, is very different from these definitions.

Paul always uses nomos (“law”) to refer to Torah, whether in the sense of “the Mosaic covenant” (by far his most frequent usage) or in the more general sense of “the five books of Moses.” In the second sense, his focus is on Torah as Scripture, as e.g. the Genesis narratives concerning Abraham are referred to as nomos in Galatians 4.24 and, given the immediately following context, likely in Romans 3.31 as well.

Similarly – and not surprisingly, given the content of the books we call Gospels – the term “gospel” is a very concrete term with definite historical connections (after all, it means “good news“). While free forgiveness of sins has always been God’s way of dealing with sinners, the term “gospel” is tied to God’s concrete and dateable historical actions related to what some scholars call “the Christ event,” with Christ’s death and resurrection at the center (see e.g. 1 Cor 15.1-4).

I have become increasingly convinced of the importance of abandoning the abstract usage of these terms, not because the general theological point is wrong; it is not. God saved us, out of His own sovereign mercy, not because of works of righteousness which we have done (Titus 3.5). But the problem with using the specific terms law and gospel in the way that we do means that inevitably those “synthetic” meanings get read into all the biblical texts where the terms appear. And that is not a good thing.

What follows is a lightly modified version of a private post I made on this subject. I have tried to clean up the style slightly, as well as eliminate points that were really germane only to a narrower discussion. To aid clarity, I have also added a couple of brief statements that distill thoughts I had made in the more extended discussion.  I trust making this public will prove somewhat helpful in terms of clarifying the importance of the fight for biblical language. Read the rest of this entry »

As we’ve seen, Israel was ignorant of God’s righteousness and did not submit to it. Meaning: they did not acknowledge the Messiah as their Lord, as God’s embodied righteousness for their salvation.

“For,” Paul adds, “Christ is the telos of the law.” Actually, he says more than that, but we need to sort out several things, so let’s deal with telos first.

So, what does telos mean? Its field of meaning revolves around the idea of “end,” but there are nuances. It can of course simply mean “end.” (E.g. Mt 10.22, “The one who endures to the end will be saved; Mt 24.6: “The end is not yet.”) This is the most common usage in the Gospels; and it appears frequently in Paul.

Read the rest of this entry »

In Romans 9.30ff, Paul explains that the Gentiles, who were not in fact pursuing righteousness, have attained (katalambano - apprehended, come upon, obtained, overtake)  it. Is Paul talking about “the righteousness of God,” or the right standing of human beings before God (justification)? Well, if we’ve been following Romans from the get-go, we would realize that these two sides meet together: the righteousness of God is revealed ek pisteos eis pistin – from faith unto faith (1.17). That is, from the faithfulness of God to the righteous response of faith which God requires. When God’s pistis and our pistis meet, the righteousness of God is revealed, and our righteousness is adjudicated, i.e. we are justified. (Romans 4 deals with this at length.) Read the rest of this entry »

A while back, I had a few posts on the Biblical Horizons blog discussing Romans 3. Much of the focus was upon the phrase, “the righteousness of God.” One thing I noted is that in the overwhelming majority of passages Paul cites in Romans 3, something is said about Yahweh’s righteousness. Given the fact that Romans 3 is by far the tightest cluster of the phrase “the righteousness of God” (dikaiosune theou), this can hardly be accidental.

Now, I think that what this means is that Paul doesn’t invent the meaning of the term. Throughout the Old Testament, wherever the divine righteousness is referred to, it has to do with God’s verity, His faithfulness. Usually, this centers upon promises of salvation, although the flip side of judgment of those who would harm His faithful ones is bound up with that.

This explains why in Romans 3.1-8, Paul (1) speaks about the oracles of God – and given 1.2, his central view is on the prophetic Word concerning God’s Son; and (2) veers between language of faithfulness, righteousness, and truth. In Hebrew, we are looking at ‘emunah, which captures all of these. God’s righteousness is His faithfulness, trustworthiness, verity with His commitments.

I guess you could say, then, that I am one of those people who takes the term to mean something like “covenant faithfulness.” Read the rest of this entry »

(If you’re wondering about my recent posting method, I’m simply putting into words the reflections I’ve been having while reading through the Greek New Testament during breaks at work (occasionally concrete work does have its perks). It’s a habit I’m trying to get back into.)

I noted earlier that the principle of election articulated in Rom 9 can cut two ways. On the one hand, it can be used to defend a “narrowing of the field”: God is still faithful even if He saves only a remnant of Israel. On the other, since consideration of works, willing or running are all excluded, God is free to save “all Israel” even if they are marked by prolonged hardness and rebellion.

This silent undercurrent also works with Paul’s quotation of Hosea later in the chapter: “I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’ and those who were not beloved, ‘Beloved’” (9.25). In chapter 9, Paul is making this point regarding the Gentiles, over against the mass of Israel that has fallen.

But the careful reader cannot fail to note that the original Hosea quotation is referring to lost Israelites. If God can call Gentiles “My people,” much more can He recover Israel; and the telling word here is beloved, which recurs again in 11.28: though presently hardened, the mass of Israel is “beloved for the sake of the fathers.”

Something similar can be said of the next verse: “and it shall be in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ there they shall be called the sons of the living God’” (9.26).

I think this is the answer to those who simply displace unbelieving Israel and say: “Well, Jesus Himself says they are not sons of Abraham, but children of their father the devil. There are no promises to them.” Not so. It is true, in a very real and direct sense, He has said: “You are not My people.” But there is a promise beyond that, and the disenfranchised will once again be called sons of the living God.

I hope to post further on Romans tonight, but the subject matter is going to shift somewhat, so I’ll leave the rest for another post.

Since I felt forced by the text of Romans 11 to adopt the future-conversion view (i.e. that it prophesies the conversion of the people prior to the return of Christ), I have frequently come across those who attempt to counter that reading by appealing to Romans 9. The earlier chapter, after all, says that not all Israel is Israel, and thus narrows down the recipients of the promises.

There are numerous problems with this way of dealing with Romans 11, however.

1) Romans 9 has at least as many obscurities and difficulties as does Romans 11. So why is it that the latter chapter is treated like it must be subjected to Romans 9, but not vice-versa?

2) The principle of election articulated in Romans 9 is in fact a double-edged sword that can cut two ways.

3) While Romans 9 makes a comparison between the hardness of the Pharaoh of the exodus and that of Israel contemporary to Paul, careful reading of the two passages reveals an explicit disanalogy at a very critical point.

I’m not going to argue for (1) here, but I do want to reflect a bit on (2) and (3).
Read the rest of this entry »

Because the creation itself will be freed from the slavery of the corruption unto the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
[Romans 8.21; translation mine]

This is an interesting text on a wide variety of levels, not least of which is the central point, viz. that just as God’s people look forward to an eschatological hope, so does the creation itself.

In my reading today, though, the thing that intrigued me was the parallelism. Read the rest of this entry »

This is one of the most helpful, insightful, and balanced treatments of matters such as Christian sexual activity before marriage, and the (general) case to marry young. The author knows he is bucking current trends among evangelicals, and is calling upon us, not merely to change our thinking, but our practice.

I’ve long held that Romans 11 promises a future conversion for “all Israel” – i.e. the preponderance of the people. (See esp my essay here: http://www.biblicalstudiescenter.org/interpretation/rom11_26.htm as well as my forthcoming essay in the James Jordan festschrift which is in the works.)

But I’ve largely remained indifferent to whether there remains a future land promise (built e.g. on Gen 12 and a host of related passages), and I’m more than wary of Zionism, which I take to be a very misguided attempt to manufacture a fulfillment of God’s promises without understanding either the promises or the corollary conditions.

I still don’t claim to have a settled position on the land issue. But I was forced to lean toward it when I was struck recently by how much sense it would make. After all:

1. We know that a whole host of Israelites have savingly believed God over the years, both before and after the advent of Christ.
2. We believe in the resurrection of the body, not an eternal state of disembodied “spirituality.”
3. Correspondingly, we believe in the renovation of the earth, just as we believe in the renovation of the body.
4. Surely a renovated earth would have geography, and since the renovation is a renovation of this earth, it seems at least plausible – nay, overwhelmingly likely – that the new earth will have the land of Canaan.
5. Since everyone has to live somewhere – why wouldn’t believing Israelites live in Palestine? Why should that be thought the least bit “strange”?

I have just posted “Sabbath and Sunday: A Brief Biblical-Theological Consideration” at my biblicalstudiescenter.org site.

The essay includes treatment of Paul’s comments about “days and months and seasons and years” in Gal 4.10, as well as discussion of “the Lord of the Sabbath” passage (Mk 2.23-28) and a variety of related material.

This has really been a paper that I probably should have worked on long ago, given how often the subject comes up and I get involved in protracted discussions, but anyway… judging from the sorts of issues that have come up in conversations/debates I’ve been involved in, I think I’ve covered the major bases necessary. See what you think….

Regretfully, I have just learned that Canon Press will not be publishing These Are Two Covenants. We signed the contract about 13 months ago, and contract signing to release date is usually about a year, so I thought I’d contact them and see what the story was. My understanding is that Canon is cutting back for financial reasons.

Unfortunately, I have no idea regarding an alternative publisher at this time. Disappointing, but five years after first writing and two failed contracts later, I’m still without a publisher, and don’t have the resources on hand myself to print it through my own company.

If the fourth century were the twenty-first century….